


It's cold in these bones (of a man and a child.)

by thewhitewolf (LetsPlayRayvin)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Guilt, How to cope, Hurt No Comfort, Multi, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-04-30 13:44:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14498253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetsPlayRayvin/pseuds/thewhitewolf
Summary: Every time Steve manages to find some semblance of sleep in the middle of the night, his dreams always end up the same. His dreams morph into his worst nightmare, one he had to live out on what could be jotted down as the worst day in his life.And Tony is stuck trying to fix the unfixable. He's failed people before. He refuses to fail this one. Not now, not ever.(IW + Endgame spoiler heavy.)





	1. Ashes.

**Author's Note:**

> Major IW + possible Endgame spoilers. Go forth at your own risk.

Every time Steve manages to find some semblance of sleep in the middle of the night, his dreams always end up the same. His dreams morph into his worst nightmare, one he had to live out on what could be jotted down as the worst day in his life.

* * *

 

_“Where did he go?” Steve’s respirations are rapid, and his brows knit together as he spins around, looking. The purple-skinned Titan had disappeared. No. No. That couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t how the fight was supposed to go. His heart is hammering so hard, the sound of it drumming in his ears is practically all he can hear. “Thor, where did he go?”_

_The Asgardian says nothing, appearing shell-shocked, full of disbelief. He looks at nothing, says nothing. Steve has half a mind to grab him, force them to meet eyes. Until he hears something that makes his heart fall out of his goddamn ass._

_“Steve?” Bucky sounds so small, so scared. So confused._

_He turns around to see his best friend dissipating. Turning to ash before his very eyes. The lower half of Bucky’s body is gone by the time Steve looks at him, and he’s frozen in place. In the blink of an eye, Bucky’s gone. He falls to his knees, and he can’t draw in a breath. His chest is constricting, his airways are all closing up. He’s suffocating on air, and he’s so numb, there are no tears threatening to burn in his eyes._

_They were so close to each other, Steve could’ve jolted forward and touched him. Held Bucky’s wrist or his hand before he fell to the ground into nothing but a pile of dust. He could’ve done something, but now, he’s grasping at straws, grasping at ash that stains his fingertips and gloves gray._

_“Oh god,” he whispers, feeling utterly helpless for one of the first times in his life. The man with a plan has nothing to suggest now. He’s a plane doing down, doing the quickest nosedive of his life. But the ground never comes and offers him a moment of reprieve, of blissful nothingness when he meets it. He’s just falling. Falling. Falling._

_He lost him again. Once to a train railing giving way. Once to a fight he lost before plummeting into the river._

_Once to a Mad Titan who destroyed his world just when he’d regained it._

* * *

 

 

Steve bolts upright in bed, gasping. His best friend’s voice is still echoing in his head, fading away back into nothing, nothing, nothing. Like he had faded away into nothing when he turned to ash right in front of him, ash that he could pick up in his fingers and watch the breeze catch it, flittering away into nothing. Bucky was nothing, his everything, his nothing.

 

Shaking hands work to untangle the web of sheets that had wound around him, a sea for him to drown in. How long had he been tossing and turning before the vice-like grasp of sleep finally let him go? When he’s finally out, he throws them aside and gets up, onto his feet. He runs desperate fingers through his hair, grips at dark tendrils of hair so hard, his scalp hurts.

 

_“Just.. don’t,” Steve whispers to Nat, who’s trying to coax him into saying something, washing his hands of the ash that had once been his best friend. He knows that she’s trying her best to get him to come out of it, come back to reality, but he can’t. He can’t let that happen just yet. Washing away the traces of soot-gray on his fingertips and gloves means that he’s washing away some of the last physical remnants of Bucky that he has left. Washing away the ashes means that he’s washing away his drive to fight, which is the only thing keeping him from truly wallowing in the dark depths of himself that he’d never had to stare into like this before._

_When he found out that Bucky was still alive, that he had survived the fall from the train, Steve swore to himself that he’d never lose him again. That’s why he had Sam follow his trail for so long. That’s why he was willing to follow him absolutely anywhere. His best friend was the ghost of the stories that people were told, told of some glorious fist of HYDRA that shook the world and killed mercilessly without ever leaving a trace. His best friend was the person thrown into a cage in his own mind every time those words were muttered in Russian, his best friend was the person who was tossed aside each time a mission came up. His best friend was the scapegoat whose name deserved to be cleared before he lived out the rest of his life normally._

_Normally. Hah. None of them ever got to experience any sense of normalcy in their everyday lives. Or even if they did, they got ripped away. The carpet got yanked out from underneath them each and every time. That just send everyone crashing to the ground. And Steve was stupid enough to let it happen again. He thought that this time with Bucky would be different, that he wouldn’t lose him again._

_He hears Thor attempting to make sense of what happened from somewhere behind him. Whoever’s left is stuck to regroup, try and think of some sort of plan that they can try to execute and.. reverse things. Though, the Gauntlet disappeared, the Stones disappeared with Thanos. They’ve got a whole lot of nothing to work with. Thor talks on as Steve stares down at his gloves again. His Bucky-stained fingertips._

_Suddenly, he coughs. Retches. He has to support himself with two hands pressed against a tree as he gasps desperately between coughs. His mouth tastes like bile and regret. There’s a gentle touch to the small of his back, someone asking a soft, ‘Are you okay?’ It doesn’t even register in his head who it is. He doesn’t respond. He just stares at the soil as tears finally begin to well up in his eyes, stinging as they threaten to spill over. He can't breathe. He has no plan. He can't breathe. He always has a plan, but now he doesn't, and there's nothing he can do to fix this right now. The man with the plans and the answers is a sitting fucking duck in shark-infested waters. He's waiting for them to close in. Just waiting. Gasping. Coughing. Spluttering and trying to keep his lungs filled._

 

_Nobody has any answers. Nothing makes sense. None of it._

The sun’s just beginning to rise outside. He spares a glance out the window, at the explosion of colors in the sky. Reds, oranges, pinks, chasing away fleeting purples and blues from the night before it. The clouds look like they’re lit aflame from within, bursting with all the colors the sky paints itself with. But he can’t find it in him to bask in the beauty of the earth right now. Not yet.

 

Normally, he could afford himself the briefest break to draw a sketch of the sky and attempt to emulate the colors of it in his sketchbook. But now, today, his sketchbook lays long-forgotten wherever he’d last ditched it. Drawing is one of the last things on his mind. Instead, he makes the familiar trek to his coffee pot. He’s just been buying the cheap shit lately; it’s easy to just dump in and forget about while it brews. Since he already before needed so much of it for it to really do anything, he goes for the bottom-shelf stuff. The added touch of barely-managing-to-get-any-sleep means that he just blows through it even faster than he usually does.

 

He measures out some of the coffee, and from there, his brain goes on on autopilot mode. Before he knows it, the new pot is brewing, drip-drip-dripping. The voice in the back of his head murmurs a suggestion of a thought about breakfast. Naturally, he ignores it and goes to check his phone, see if anyone has contacted him about any breakthrough in the plans.

 

He lifts the device, and the screen lights up, revealing.. a whole lot of nothing. They’re all stumped. Reconvening later that day would be fun. Sighing, he sets it back down, sets his attention back on his coffee. Food can wait. Everything can wait. After he chugs a cup (or two) of coffee, he’d go for a run. Try and clear his mind of the dream still haunting it, lingering like an unwelcomed ghost. He’d run ‘til his lungs burned, screaming for more air, and he’d still continue onwards.

 

It's one of the only ways he knows how to cope right now, and it isn’t even really coping.


	2. Apologies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT (4/26/19): THIS FANFICTION'S ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WILL HAVE INFLUENCES FROM ENDGAME'S STORYLINE, BUT WILL NOT FOLLOW IT EXACTLY.

Tony doesn’t know how to make anything ‘adequate’. Simple adequacy is still inadequacy in his book. Especially when it comes to protecting those that he loves. Especially when it comes to the people that he holds near and dear to his heart. Things have to be better than the best they’ve seen. He has to be better than the best. Every creation, every little thing, has to be the best that it can be. If it's supposed to be safe, it has to be safer than anything the world has ever seen. Strong? Stronger than Banner or the Other Guy. Stronger than the two of them combined. Stronger than their minds. Everything has to be supreme.

 

He’s always had to be better. It was a complex that had been instilled in him since he was just a young boy, pining for the attention of a father who couldn’t give less of a damn if he tried. His mother always loved him and did what she could, but she was just that – his mother. She was more than enough, but still, there was a void in his heart where the love of his father should have been. A void that only Howard Stark could’ve filled. But he never did, no matter what Tony did to try and be enough, to try and be the child that he might have been proud of.

 

Never once did Howard relent. Not one moment before he died. And that haunted him, for a long time. It still does sometimes, when he’s working on new ideas. His father had created so many things that had the opportunity to change the world. And he carries on that legacy, without either of his parents to watch what he does.

 

He has the tendency to fret over those that he loves even more now, though it isn’t something that he actively shows. Watching Pepper fall once to what should’ve been her death was the wakeup call that he never knew that he needed. In that moment, not being able to grab Pepper’s hand before she plummeted from his grasp and into the depths of a fiery mess, Tony thought that his life was over. He thought that that was it. He had failed another person in his life that he had sworn to do enough by. When he realized she was still alive, he felt like he had another lease on making things right.

 

Of course, he didn’t immediately do that, but it’s still a work in progress.

 

He feels the same way when it comes to Peter Parker. He acts like he just wants Peter to be better than himself, but it’s because he **cares** about him. This is a kid who’s gotten himself mixed into so much shit, he might be overwhelmed sometimes, even if he doesn’t admit it to anyone or himself. This is a kid who should’ve had more of a chance to be a kid, but now carries so many responsibilities on his plate, he’s like Atlas trying to carry the weight of his own world on his shoulders. Tony knows how that feels. He’s **felt that before.** He still does. So he’s wanted to make things safer for Peter, at least, because he can rest easier at night knowing that the kid has less of a chance at accidentally killing himself or getting seriously, seriously hurt if he has all these safety precautions installed on his suits and –

 

Peter. God, Peter Parker.

 

* * *

 

 

 

_“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good.” That tiny voice, those seven words, drive an icy chill down his spine and a dagger straight through his heart._

_Tony turns and sees Peter Parker, slowly beginning to fade into ash like everyone else had. Before his very eyes, the kid that he’s sworn to himself to protect with his life is fading. “You’re alright,” he says, even though he doesn’t believe the words himself. They sound false to his own ears. Peter’s fading and he can’t do anything to stop it. This kid, this stupid, amazing, selfless kid that shouldn’t have come to space is disappearing._

_The stupid kid that he should’ve sent home. The stupid kid that he should’ve been sure went home before things got too hot and heavy. That stupid kid who cared more about saving the universe than he did about saving his own skin. The stupid kid that isn’t stupid at all and just wanted to help, always wanted to help._

_Fuck, Stark, why didn’t you make sure he went home?_

_“I don’t- I don’t know what’s happening.” Peter lurches forward, staggering a few uneasy steps, and collapses into his arms. It’s like his knees are gelatin that’s not quite set and had given out, and their bodies are together, Tony’s arms winding securely around him. No, no, no. The boy’s grabbing his shoulders, his back, clinging to his shirt like it’s his last lifeline. His voice is tremulous; it’s clear there are tears burning in his eyes, and that his throat is constricting, and that he’s confused. Scared._

_So is Tony._

_“I don’t wanna go.. I don’t wanna go.” How is Tony supposed to not tell Parker that he doesn’t want him to go either? That if he had the choice, he’d stop all this and ease his fears and make sure he made it back home okay? Made it back home to his friends? To Aunt May?_

_“Sir, please, please. I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna go..” They’re going down to the unforgiving soil of Titan together, Peter, Tony, Tony, Peter. His voice is breaking, and it’s collapsing on Tony like a ton of bricks. This is a kid sent to fight a war that he never should’ve been involved with. He couldn’t be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man without a neighborhood to protect, but he also couldn’t be one if he died right here, right now. If he ceased to exist._

_Tony lays him on his back, hovers over him. What can he do? What can he **do?** Peter’s eyes lock on his, and he swears even now that his heart stopped in that moment and never started beating again. It takes so long for Peter’s eyes to come back around and look at him. They’re fixated skywards, taking in everything and nothing, looking but not seeing. Come on, kid, come on, kid._

_Finally, their eyes meet. The moment is fleeting, as is the strength behind Peter’s voice. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, two words, seven letters each like dozens of blades ripping into Tony’s skin and leaving new, fresh wounds behind. This is a fucking kid. He shouldn't be going through this. He shouldn't be in tears out of fear of the unknown, out of what's happening to him. He shouldn't have had to fight this fight. He shouldn't have been here. He shouldn't have been here. He shouldn't have. What kind of a potential mentor is Tony, letting him stay here, fight a war that they knew they could lose?_

_‘There’s nothing you need to apologize for,’ he wants to say. ‘Knock it off, kid, things are going to be okay. You’re okay. Don’t do this to me. I’m the one who should be apologizing. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault. It’s okay, kid. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re alright.’_

_He doesn’t get to say any of it, though. His words get lost, he hesitates. And Peter turns to ash right from underneath him, in his arms. His head turns away from Tony, his eyes take on the same stare of fish at the fish market, wide and glassy and empty. His features all collapse in on each other as he fades away. Peter’s gone. Tony’s left where the two of them once were._

_When Tony holds his hands to his chest, when the tears begin to flow, he can feel the strange, foreign, stomach-turning smoothness of ash-covered skin against ash-covered skin. His hands hold parts of Peter, indistinguishable bits of him. He squeezes his eyes shut and brings his hands up to the lower part of his face. He isn’t a god-fearing man in the least. Nobody upstairs ever heard his frantic pleas when he was younger, and he’s more than certain that they’ve tuned him out by this point in his life._

_But in one final act of desperation, he prays. He doesn’t pray for a resolution. Not an immediate one, anyways. He just prays a prayer he never thought that he would have to. And he gets nothing in return._

* * *

He’s still working on little things for the Iron Spider suit, minute details that might not make that much of a difference to Peter but could greatly improve the interface of it in the long run. It’s all running on simulations he has of the suit and the running programming in it, because..

 

Because..

 

Peter and the suit are gone, and this is the only thing that he has motivating him at the moment. The schematics of all the hardware is the same, but it doesn’t _feel_ the same working on it when he knows that the suit and the wearer were both reduced to ash. When he saw them disappear, it feels so wrong to be working on this, but so right.

 

When they get everyone back, he needs to be sure that Peter will be safe. He needs to know that his work hasn’t been for nothing, and that he hasn’t failed another person. He can’t fail another person. He doesn’t have it in him. He can’t. He just can’t.

 

His workspace is a mess of coffee cups, sketches, notes scrawled in near-illegible chicken scratch. There’s no way to accurately number the times that he’d fallen asleep with his head on the tabletop beneath his work, much to Pepper’s growing chagrin. She’s being patient with him, though. Trying to understand.

 

But nobody understands. Nobody can understand. He had time to grieve the losses of his mother, his father. They still hurt, but they’ve stopped haunting his dreams as frequently. His heart still aches, but not as badly as it once did. After it was torn back open by the video.. by..

 

He was allowed time to heal from that, though.

 

Peter disappearing, however? That wound isn’t closed. It isn’t showing any signs of closing yet, actually. Not after he saw everyone else disappear, too. Drax. Mantis. Quill. Even Strange. They all were gone in the blink of an eye, at the drop of a hat. Peter lingered, and he had to hear his panic, his fear. He had to hear his final fucking apology before he was gone, too.

 

That isn’t going to go away anytime soon. No matter how badly he wants for it to, no matter what god he prays to when. It sticks with him.

 

It feels like it's going to be a part of him for a long, long time. Maybe forever.

**Author's Note:**

> PoV will alternate between chapters.


End file.
